Wonders of the World

Wonders of the World: Lecture 9

Schmidt Number: S-2436

On-line since: 31st March, 2002

Lecture 9

26th August, 1911

Y

ESTERDAY
I had to point out how a kind of reversal of the forces which led to a
densification of the body is taking place in the human organisation.
As an example of this I drew attention to a kind of etherisation of
the coarser physical substance of the blood which emanates all the
time from our system of heart-and-blood circulation, with the result
that the finest elements of the blood are passing over all the time
into the same substance as that of which the human ether body
consists. And we have seen that these etheric elements stream upwards
from the heart in quite distinct currents and permeate the brain; we
have seen further that it is in fact because this newly-formed
element of our etheric body streams through the brain that we are
able to develop knowledge which goes beyond the completely egotistic
knowledge of what takes place within our own organisation. I tried to
make it clear that unless these etheric streams were to rise up from
the heart to the brain, only ideas, concepts, feelings connected with
our own bodily organisation could find expression through the
instrument of the brain.

The whole future
evolution of mankind is involved in this process of which I have just
told you. Let me remind you once more that Earth evolution was
preceded by the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, and that these
preceding evolutions had resulted in the formation of an etheric man
in the period of Earth-development prior to Lemuria. Before man
entered upon his Lemurian development he was, even as regards his
physical forces, a purely etheric form. A physically solid man such
as we have today, with his thick physical blood, his system of nerves
and bones and so on, did not exist before Lemuria. All the forces
which we also have, in the physical body today, were at that time
still in etheric form. This etheric human form was shadowy and
phantom-like in comparison with the later man, it barely hinted at
what was to crystallise out later as the denser man; and it has taken
the Lemurian, the Atlantean and the post-Atlantean epochs to complete
the densification.

Now in order to
understand fully what is meant by ‘Wonders of the World,
Ordeals of the Soul, Revelations of the Spirit’ we must look
somewhat closely into this formation of man, we must see just how man
gradually solidified out of that original shadow-form. Today let us
try to picture to ourselves what the human being was like in this
pre-Lemurian era. At that time man had only a kind of shadowy form,
merely hinting at what came later. Into this Phantom
[ 1 ]
there entered the most diverse currents; the Beings
of the higher hierarchies were working within it. At that time man
did not walk upon the earth with his feet, he hovered as a Phantom in
the periphery; it was only later that he so to say stepped down upon
the earth.

The Earth itself was
as yet in a more rarefied condition. All that the higher hierarchies
wrought upon man poured into him in all kinds of currents, but while
man lived upon the Earth in this way in phantom-form, the Earth too
continued to develop, since it was by no means the solid lump of
matter described by the geologists or the mineralogists or the
physicists. To describe the Earth as the physicists and the
mineralogists do is as if in describing man one were to confine
oneself to the skeleton. What physical science describes is only a
part of the Earth, it is its skeleton. There are yet other forces,
quite other substantial things connected with the Earth, and these
constitute it as an organism in which we are embedded.

Thus the Earth too
has pursued its evolution, and during the course of the Lemurian,
Atlantean and post-Atlantean evolutions other forces have streamed
continuously towards man out of the Earth itself. We will now examine
these forces more closely. First we must pay attention to certain
forces which through the spiritual Beings of the higher hierarchies
belong to the sub-earthly current to which I referred yesterday.
These forces actually stream into man from below, they are directed
upon man (if we are to express it spatially) from the Earth upwards.
During the course of Earth evolution the forces of the higher
hierarchies penetrated into man from below; these forces which,
particularly during the Lemurian epoch but continuing also
afterwards, streamed into man and co-operated in his formation
— these forces are recognised by ordinary science as well as by
Spiritual Science as in their nature working through the Earth.
Everywhere on the Earth's surface, wherever one goes,
these forces are present. They had another task in Earth evolution as
well, but let us begin by trying to throw light on them in relation
to beings of another kingdom, in the formation of which they were
conspicuously active.

The zoologists and
the naturalists will one day be very astonished to find how
complicated has really been the formation out of the spiritual world
of all that they represent by their abstract and tidy genealogical
trees, from a certain aspect quite correctly. The relationships which
they quite rightly recognise have been brought about as the result of
very complicated currents arising from widely different spiritual
directions. Actually it is quite wrong to describe the animals which
are known in zoology as mammals as the Darwinists do. It is quite
wrong to believe that one can draw a straight line from the very
simplest mammals to the most complicated. In two different species of
mammal very different formative forces are at work. The mammals which
we have around us and which belong to the category of the ruminants
— mainly domestic animals as you know — have in the
course of their development been subjected to quite different
spiritual conditions from, for example, the feline, the lion-like
animals. We have to think of the spiritual forces as working
specifically upon the group-souls of the animals and through the
group-souls upon their physical forms. The influences which resulted
the lion species did not begin to work upon the Earth until the
approach of the Atlantean time and during that time, and these
influences reached the Earth as if driven outward from its centre
towards its surface. But the influences which worked during the
Lemurian time — and which also worked upon the human being
— are connected with what worked as formative force upon our
ruminants, influences which esotericism summarises under the symbol
of the bull. All this began at that time to exercise an
influence upon man himself, working into his formation as if from the
depths of the Earth towards its surface.

You must not be
shocked if I say that if nothing else had worked upon man he would in
his external form have resembled the bull. If these forces alone had
worked upon man their effect would have been to make him like a bull.
But little by little other forces working from within the Earth
outwards laid hold of the human organisation. They are the same
forces which exercised the main influence upon the other order of
mammals. In esotericism these influences are summarised under the
name lion. These forces enter into Earth evolution somewhat
later. If the earlier forces had not been there, if these forces
alone had worked upon man, his appearance would have resembled that
of the lion, with all the characteristics of the leonine
organisation. The complex human form has come into existence because
it has been influenced not only by one current, but by several
currents one after another.

You can now form some
idea of why the animals resembling the bull remained bull-like, and
those resembling the lion became lion-like; it is because the shadowy
forms which underlay them were not organised in the same way as the
preLemurian Phantoms of human beings had been. As a result of their
preceding Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions the human Phantoms were so
organised that they always waited for the right moment, that they
allowed a variety of successive streams to work upon them one after
another, in order that one stream should neutralise the other and
thereby bring about a higher harmony. A bull would not remain a bull
were the lion nature to work upon it and to modify its structure. The
human being approached the Earth in such a way as to enable all these
influences to work upon him.

It was not until
Atlantis that something else happened which will throw a flood of
light upon zoology when once it is recognised and made fruitful for
external science. During the course of the Atlantean epoch quite
other conditions came about. I have already said that these bull
forces and these lion forces worked as if from the depths of the
Earth towards its surface. The forces which were now to unite with
these came from without, came from the periphery. During Atlantis we
have to think of forces entering into man and fashioning him from
below upwards, and other forces from cosmic space flowing into him in
the downward direction. Thus the human Phantom again became exposed
to fresh forces which now worked upon man from another, and an
opposite, direction.

To get an idea of
what these forces are like which stream upon the Earth from cosmic
space we must ask ourselves which are the creatures upon whom they
worked with especial intensity, unhampered by other forces. We can
point to certain creatures in our environment upon which the bull
forces and the lion forces coming from within the Earth have little
influence, upon which on the contrary the forces working into the
substance of the Earth from cosmic space are almost exclusively
active. They are the creatures belonging to the bird kingdom. Our
abstract zoology will one day be very much astonished to have to
admit that the forces at work in the mammals are quite different from
those which work mainly on the bird kingdom, and, in a broader field
upon all things that propagate themselves by laying eggs outside
their own bodies. In the case of all creatures in which reproduction
takes place in this way, but especially in members of the bird
kingdom, forces streaming in from cosmic space are predominantly at
work. In esotericism these forces are comprised under the name
eagle.

Now if we think of
these forces, which come to expression pre-eminently in the formation
of the bird world, as harmonised in man with the lion forces and the
bull forces, so that they all become part of the original Phantom,
then this harmony results in the present-day human form. If you
consider the totally different world of the birds, you will not long
be in any doubt that the whole structure of the bird is completely
different from that of the mammal. Today I will not go into the
structure of the other members of the animal kingdom. In the
structure of the bird there is something very striking, even to
clairvoyant sight. Whereas in the case of the mammals, wherever we
turn our clairvoyant gaze, we find the astral body very strongly
developed, in the case of the birds the most outstanding feature
which meets the clairvoyant eye is the etheric body. For example, it
is the etheric body, stimulated by cosmic forces coming in from
space, which brings to expression the feathers, the plumage. The
plumage is formed from without, and a feather can only come into
being because the forces which work down upon the Earth from cosmic
space are stronger than the forces coming from the Earth. The
framework of the feather, what one may call its quill or spine, is of
course subject to certain forces coming from the Earth, but it is the
cosmic forces which contribute what is attached to the quill and
constitute the bird's plumage.

It is quite different
as regards creatures covered with hair. Forces working upward from
the Earth, forces working in the opposite direction from those in the
feathers of the birds, are predominantly at work in hair, and hair
cannot become feather, because in the case of animals and men forces
coming from cosmic space affect their hair but little. This seeming
paradox fully expresses the reality, and if one cared to elaborate it
one could say that every feather has the tendency to become a hair,
but is not a hair because the forces of cosmic space work inward on
the feather from all sides; and every hair has the tendency to become
a feather, but does not become a feather because the forces which
work from the Earth upwards are stronger than the forces which work
from without inwards. If one takes such paradoxes seriously one
discovers certain fundamental secrets in the constitution of our
world.

Let us suppose that a
man endowed with the ancient clairvoyance wanted — not simply
to describe man, who really distorts the several streams which flow
into him by harmonising them — but precisely to make manifest
these different currents, he would have to say: ‘Something
forms the foundation of the human being which cannot be seen
physically, the archetypal Phantom which today only appears in
physical form because man has harmonised the eagle, bull and lion
influences.’ Anyone who wants to study the evolution of man
must study man's archetypal Phantom as a super-sensible form.
But in order to do this he would have to separate out again what has
flowed together in man. He would have to realise that an etheric
shadow-form lies behind the whole of human development, and that into
this there enters and intermingles a bull-influence, a lion-influence
and a bird-influence, in such a way that in the finished man of today
they are no longer to be distinguished.

Suppose a
culture-epoch — for instance, that of ancient Egypt —
were trying to represent human evolution, were trying to put before
man the immense riddle of human evolution, then the real man, the
archetypal Phantom, which arose as the result of the Saturn, Sun and
Moon evolutions, would have to remain invisible; but, as if out of
the invisible, a composite figure would have to be formed, put
together out of the forms of bull and lion, with wings such as an
eagle has, such as birds in general have. If you recall the
all-embracing significance of the figure of the Sphinx, which was
intended to represent the great riddle of human evolution, then you
have in fact what a clairvoyant culture, which was inwardly aware of
the truth about humanity, put before this humanity. The features
which stand out separately in the Sphinx are in human nature inwardly
interwoven. For clairvoyant sight the human form has a very strange
appearance. If one allows such a sphinx, made up of a lion-form and a
bull-form, together with the wings of a bird, to work upon the
clairvoyant vision, and if one completes it by adding the human
Phantom which underlies it, if one weaves these elements together,
then the human form as we have it today comes into being before us.
The clairvoyant consciousness cannot then look upon a sphinx —
which to begin with does not resemble a man at all — without
saying to himself: ‘Thou art I myself!’

Now it should be
noted that in the course of this study we have also thrown light upon
the four members of man from another standpoint. A Phantom, a
shadow-form, designated in esotericism as Man, came over as
the product of the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. In the process of
the densification of this Phantom the influences named in
esotericism, lion, bull and eagle are at
work. And here we have the four esoteric symbols which together make
up the human being and which have a profound meaning for human
evolution.

We have said that in
the course of humanity's evolution on the Earth, forces from
without, cosmic forces, were at work, both upon the human being
himself, and upon other creatures, especially the bird creation. That
in fact came about during the Atlantean time; so that one can say
that an influence from cosmic space came down into those parts of the
human organisation to which normal human consciousness no longer
reaches. This influence was at work in Atlantis, and of course it has
also continued in the post-Atlantean time. This was the current
coming from what I called yesterday the upper gods, the gods who were
in a sense the representations of the sub-earthly, the Chthonic gods.
They are Beings who were encountered by the pupils of the Greek
Mysteries, who had to wrestle with the great riddle of the Sphinx.
They had to behold the unconscious part of the human being in such a
way that through self-knowledge they also arrived at the
four-foldness of humanity.

What since the time
of Atlantis had streamed into the subconscious from cosmic space,
even into its baser elements, now at the Baptism by John in the
Jordan began to flow into man's higher, more purified
parts. That is a most significant event. These forces from cosmic
space which since the time of Atlantis have worked continuously upon
the formation of the Earth and of humanity, begin to stream in the
purest way not only into the unconscious part of the human being, but
in such a way that they can influence consciousness. That is why a
pictorial image, one of the great symbols which have come down to us
through occult and religious scriptures — the symbol of the
dove, which we find in the Gospels — had to make its
appearance.

How was it possible
to describe this instreaming in its purest form from above? We know
of course what took place in the Baptism in the Jordan. We know that
at that time the threefold body of Jesus of Nazareth, which had been
prepared through the two Jesus children, as is described in my little book
The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind,
was abandoned by its ego, which was the ego of Zarathustra, and on its
departure there entered into this body the purest part of that stream
which had been pouring in all the time from cosmic space, but
hitherto only into that part of man which is today unconscious. Hence
it was correctly symbolised in the form of a bird, the figure of the
pure white dove, which represents as it were the purest extract of
what in the ancient figure of the Sphinx was the eagle or cherubic
element. That this cosmic stream should flow into the conscious part
of the human being is essential to the perfection of humanity upon
the Earth. In the picture of Jesus of Nazareth on the banks of the
Jordan with the dove hovering over him we have in fact the expression
of the Mystery which had now been brought to a certain
conclusion.

Yesterday we were
able to follow a little the cosmic history of this inward streaming
from cosmic space. Why was this cosmic instreaming able to transmute
itself into that Christpower, that Christ Impulse which, as it
continues to work further upon the Earth, will permeate the human
being completely? As man inwardly receives this Impulse he will more
and more feel the truth of St. Paul's words ‘Not I, but
Christ in me!’ As contrasted with the other three currents
which were there as the outcome of earlier evolution, this new
influence, which is the purest stream from above, will take hold of
the human being, will encompass him to a greater and greater extent,
will also liberate him ever more and more from what binds him to the
Earth. Yesterday we spoke of the historical development of this
stream and said that it was only able to be what it has in fact
become because it had been prepared for upon the Old Sun.

Whereas the upper
gods, those who, in the sense we explained yesterday, were the
representations of the others, only wished to live in the finer
elements — in the warmth, light, chemical and life elements
—, this Being, who later through the Baptism by John in the
Jordan descended to Earth, out of the most profound wisdom took with
Him the forces to which our Earth evolution had already advanced on
the Old Sun. We know from Spiritual Science that the condensation of
the warmth element to air (warmth being the essential feature of the
Saturn evolution) had already taken place during the Sun evolution.
Whereas the other Beings among the upper gods refused to take the air
element with them when they withdrew from development as a whole into
cosmic space, this Being did take the air-element with Him, so that
He remained related to the Earth. Thus through this Being there was
outside in cosmic space all the time for all future evolution an
element akin to the Earth — the element which had already on
the Old Sun condensed to air or gas. If we gaze up into space, gaze
up to the sun, as though with the eye of Zarathustra of old, we have
to see it primarily as a survival of the ancient Sun, so to say as
the ancient Sun planet come to life again, repeating in the present
what existed during the Sun evolution.

Thus, expressed in
terms of Spiritual Science, we have in the first place to see in the
sun the dwelling place — or part of it at any rate, for this
dwelling-place extends to the other planets as well — the most
essential part of the dwelling-place of the upper gods, whom we
designated yesterday as one stream of the divine world. But if you
look at this whole sun with the clairvoyant eye, you see that
everything in it which is those upper gods is there only in etheric
form, from the warmth ether upwards to the light ether, the chemical
ether and the life ether. But the sun as it moves in space today is
not only there for clairvoyant sight as an etheric structure, it is
also a globe of gas, it is condensed to the state of air. The sun
would never have condensed to the state of air had not the Being of
whom I spoke yesterday, the Being who descended to Earth with the
dove in the Baptism by John in the Jordan, during the Sun evolution
detached Himself from the Sun in a body of air and not merely in an
etheric body. Thus when we look up at the sun we have to say:
‘The warmth, light and chemical impulses in the sun are
connected with the other Beings, those who are only the ideas or
representations of the lower gods; but the gaseous element in the sun
is actually the body of Christ.’

Our modern
materialistic science will one day come to learn once more the
ancient doctrine of Zarathustra, will one day have to say to itself:
‘The sun as a globe of vapour outside in space is not merely
what our astro-chemistry makes of it, not merely what our
spectral-analysis reveals, but the sun as a globe of air or vapour
there outside in the heavens is the pristine body of Christ, who was
associated with the other upper gods, but was also connected with the
being of the Earth.’ — That is what Zarathustra perceived
when he expressed the Mystery of the Christ in the sun by the word
Aura or Ahura Mazdao — the great wisdom-filled Spirit,
the great wisdom, the great aura. And then what up to that time had
existed solely in the sun, and yet was akin to the nature of the
Earth, did in fact take possession in the mysterious moment of the
Baptism by John in the Jordan, of the physical, etheric and astral
bodies of Jesus of Nazareth. In the body of Jesus of Nazareth for the
first time upon our Earth, the purified stream from cosmic space
united with the newly arising etheric body streaming from the human
heart to the brain. During the Baptism by John in the Jordan there
took place a union between what was indeed a real stream that came
from without, from cosmic space — being moreover permeated with
airy substance — and the stream which rises upwards
continuously as the finest etheric constituents of the heart-blood
towards the head. This is what first gave to every human soul the
possibility of permeating itself with that element out of cosmic
space which is represented to us in the sign of the dove at the
Baptism by John in the Jordan. In fact, through that event an
intercourse was created between the entire universe, so far as it is
accessible to us, and its purest extract, which previously,
provisionally we might say, had co-operated in what is called
esoterically the eagle-stream. It was a communication, an
interaction, between all that streamed from the Earth and formed the
human body from below upwards and what as macrocosmic stream worked
into man from without. From this you see how we can enter ever more
deeply into the Mystery which took place in Palestine. The more we
ourselves advance in knowledge of what the world is, the better we
come to understand the Mystery of Palestine.

Now we are bound to
ask why the human being no longer sees or feels anything at all of
this ctheric stream which flows upwards from his heart to his brain.
Modern science is superficial, hence its attitude to history is also
superficial, and it often takes age-old truths to be age-old errors.
If you studied the Greek philosopher Aristotle you would
find in his writings a remarkable teaching about the nature of man, a
remarkable description of that ‘wonder of the world’, the
human being. You would find a description of how extremely fine
etheric elements flow from the heart to the head and there, as they
contact the brain, cool down. Modern science of course says
‘Aristotle was certainly very intelligent for a Greek, but
today every schoolboy knows that this was not so.’ But it is
those who speak in this way of Aristotle who are in the wrong. The
truth is that though Aristotle had not himself the clairvoyant
consciousness which enabled him to know it for himself, he knew from
old traditions what in still earlier times it had been possible to
observe through an original, natural clairvoyance. This consciousness
of etheric currents rising from the heart to the head was certainly
to be found until far on into the Middle Ages, right on into the
fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. We find a certain awareness of it
even in the works of Descartes. But according to historians of
philosophy ‘Descartes has some fantastic tale about the vital
spirits which flow from the heart to the brain, but that is just an
old-wives' tale. Happily we know better than that.’

But it is not an
old-wives' tale, it is the truth, a truth which originated in
the time when such things could be perceived by a natural
clairvoyance. How then must we put the matter from the point of view
of modern clairvoyance, modern occult science? We may perhaps feel
somewhat uneasy with the way in which Aristotle puts it, since of
necessity he only drew upon tradition, the old clairvoyant forces
being no longer at his disposal. But if by means of the esotericism
which has been available since the thirteenth century one undertakes
an investigation of the whole human being, then one perceives that in
fact there is such an etheric current from the heart to the head.

One observes also
something else. Not only does an etheric current go from the heart to
the head, but astral currents are also present in this stream. If one
looks closely at these currents it becomes clear that they contain
both etheric elements, substances of the human etheric body, and
substances of man's astral body. A substance streams from heart
to head in which substantial elements both of the etheric and of the
astral body of man are present. Now the brain is a most remarkable
instrument of human nature. Owing to the way it has been formed since
the last third of the Atlantean epoch, it has acquired one very
peculiar quality. It arrests the astrality which rises up, prevents
the astral current from passing through it, while it does allow the
etheric current to pass. I repeat — the brain as physical
instrument is an organ in which part of the current which comes from
the heart is dammed up. The brain is permeable for the etheric
current, but not for the astral one. The astral current is arrested
in our brain; in the region of the head the seer perceives that
astral currents rising upwards from the body spread out in the brain
but are held up there, are allowed to pass through the brain not at
all, or only to a very small extent. These upward astral currents
which are arrested by the brain have a certain power of attraction
for the external astral substantialities which are always around us
in the astral substance of the Earth. Hence the astral body of man in
the region of the head is as though knit together out of two
astralities, out of the astrality which continually streams towards
us from the cosmos, and the astrality in the human body which comes
up from below and is attracted by the outer astrality.

Thus the astral body
around the head, quite near the skin of the head, has a thickening,
something like a cap — to put it rather grotesquely —
made of astral substance — a cap which we wear all the time. We
have in the region of the head an astral covering consisting of the
thickening which arises through the knitting together of the inner
and the outer astralities. The rays of the etheric body pass through
this astral hood or cap, since they are not arrested by the brain,
and the purer they are — that is, the less they still contain
of the instincts, desires, passions and emotions of human nature
— the lighter and more brilliant they appear. Thus the human
aura, when seen from the front, acquires a kind of coronet, a wreath
of astrality, through which the rays of the etheric body pass. That
is the halo which those gifted with the ancient clairvoyance
perceived in those whose etheric aura shone brightly because of the
purity of their being. This is what we see depicted in pictures. That
is what is meant by the halo, that is what becomes visible to the
clairvoyant who clearly sees the aura round the head. The inner
astral aura, the inner astral substance, through a peculiar
characteristic of the brain, is retained and disposed around the
head.

Please try to grasp
this process very clearly. Etheric-astral substance in man flows from
below upwards. This ethericastral substance expands in the brain in
such a way as to fill it, but is held back there, just as a ray of
light which falls upon a mirror is arrested and thrown back. Here we
have the true mirroring-process. Because the astral stuff of the
brain is held back, it reflects itself, and what in this way enters
into you and is reflected, is your thought, your conscious feeling,
what you normally experience as your soul-life. And it is only
because this astral part is so to speak tied together or sewn
together by the etheric currents streaming through the brain, which
thus effect a union between the inner astrality and the outer, that
knowledge of the outer world comes about. Everything that we know of
the outer world we know because the outer astrality unites with the
inner astrality by virtue of the strange astral cap or hood which
everyone has.

Yes, my dear friends,
even the history of civilisation will still be greatly enriched by
means of occultism. Let me draw your attention to the fact that in
ancient times men actually saw such things, and that the aura which
was in olden times still visible was copied in men's clothing.
Men adopted helmets because they were shaped like the astral cap or
hood which crowns every man. All clothing originated in this way,
through man's imitating in his dress the etheric or the
astral element which he had around him. If we want to understand
ancient garments, priestly robes in particular, if we want to know
why this or that originated, we only need to be able to look
clairvoyantly upon what surounds men as their etheric or astral
auras. For the form of these auras was reproduced in ancient
garments, and is still represented in the vestments connected with
religious cults or rituals. Nowadays — I say this by the way
— we have become so corrupted by materialism that we ignore the
aura and will have nothing to do with the kind of clothing which
represents what man bears within him. The craze for nudism has
emerged in our time because the materialistic mind is no longer aware
of those higher etheric and astral auras which men bear around them,
and from which they have derived the shape of their garments. In
olden times, though not so very long ago, the colours of these auras
were reproduced in human clothing. If you look at pictures by the old
masters the colour of the garments still bears witness to a vestigial
consciousness of the aura. Notice how Mary is usually depicted with
undergarment and cloak of specific colours. The painter could not
give to Mary the yellow robe of the Magdalene! Why not? Because the
aura of a Magdalene is quite different from that of a Mary! The
painter of old brought very clearly to expression that the raiment
represented what the human being carries around him supersensibly as
a kind of clothing. And if you look at what the figures of the Greek
gods wear, you see that not only their clothing, but also their
helmet-shaped headdresses and the like — as apparent for
example in the case of Pallas Athene — are due to the way the
Greek sculptors were conditioned to think of the auras of their
gods.

Thus you see that the
man who has progressed to real spiritual knowledge of human nature
has to admit: ‘All that you see around you is only a very
superficial expression of your true being.’ When a man feels
his consciousness strong within him he is driven to say: ‘This
consciousness of mine only grasps a very small part indeed of human
nature; there is something else working in me all the
time.’

Now we are in a
position to carry to completion what we have already said about the
brain. If we go farther and consider the human being clairvoyantly in
respect of other regions of his being, we find something most
remarkable. Whereas the etheric and astral elements mount upwards as
far as his brain, where the astral part is arrested and the etheric
part protrudes beyond as a kind of corona, we see that the ego-part
of man has been arrested earlier as a kind of inner aura in the
region of the heart. The true inner ego-aura is already arrested in
the region of the heart, it only presses upward as far as the heart,
and there unites with a part of the outer aura, unites with the
corresponding part of the macrocosmic aura. Two elements in fact are
entwined in the heart — the element which enters from the
cosmos, and the ego-aura which mounts up from below, but is dammed
back in the heart. Just as the astral aura is arrested in the brain,
so is the ego-aura held back in the heart, where it makes contact
with an element of ego-aura coming from without. Hence the fact is
that the real ego-consciousness of man does not take place in the
brain. What I have said about the man of Atlantis, that his ego was
drawn into him, must be thought of more explicitly as an incoming of
the external cosmic ego, which since the time of Atlantis has
advanced as far as the heart, where it has united with another stream
which comes up from below and reaches the heart. Thus the heart is
organically the place where through the instrument of the blood the
real ego of man as it manifests in our consciousness comes into
being.

Everything that I
have just been telling you shows the place man holds in the
macrocosmic world. We are all that; all that is in us. All that is
taking place in us and the normal consciousness of present-day man
grasps only so much of it as everybody of course knows, that is to
say, only what lies on the surface. When you realise that the
world-wonder — man contains such immensities, you can well
imagine how complex and manifold is the world that lies about us and
how our conscious knowledge merely skims the surface of the three
kingdoms of Nature which are our environment. Yes; we must face the
fact that our ordinary life of soul, our consciousness, stays on the
surface and gives us knowledge of only the tiniest important part of
the human being.

A time comes when
what I have just been saying in such a matter of fact way penetrates
and oppresses the man who is striving for higher knowledge, for
super-sensible knowledge. He suddenly becomes aware: ‘The
knowledge you have had hitherto has tended rather to conceal than to
reveal.’ There he stands in all his human weakness before the
wonders of the world. It is the very essence of what we must call the
ordeals of the soul that this consciousness should not render him
faint-hearted, impotent, that he should find that confidence to
persevere of which I spoke yesterday. Strong, forceful energy, hope
and confidence bring the soul through each trial, for these qualities
enable it to face all that we have called the world-wonders—the
riddles of the world. And the world displays ever more
‘wonders’ the further we penetrate into the
super-sensible. But since each fresh marvel presents us with a fresh
unknown, we are perpetually faced with new challenges. In everyday
life for example it would be a test if, after having known a man for
some time, believing him to be what he seemed to be, we were suddenly
to discover him to be something quite different. We could then either
break with him or rise above this difficulty and remain true to him.
In that case we should have stood the test of friendship. Trials of
this kind exist too as regards the world-wonders. We face them with
all the ideas and feelings which our soul has acquired about them,
but we are progressing and — not that the world is changing,
but because we are penetrating further and further into it —
fresh things are continually meeting us, and again and again we have
to say ‘What you have perceived hitherto is
maya.’ Then we can be assailed by doubt. Above all we
can begin to feel that we have pressed on too fast — as
Johannes Thomasius does in the last scene but one of
The Soul's Probation.
Hitherto he has made a certain picture
of Lucifer which accorded with his soul's development,
but it is only an image, a shadow. As he progresses further a deeper,
more significant Lucifer appears to him, and he has to retrace his
steps in order to get to know him in his fulness, and no longer as a
shadow.

In the same way a man
who has advanced to what for him is the next higher stage of
clairvoyance can advance still further and say to himself,
‘What I have reached so far is nevertheless still only shadow,
image; it must become more solid.’ Because we are all the time
advancing we are faced by ever new configurations of the world. We
can enter into these new configurations with stout souls, then we
shall withstand the challenge and be able to derive from it ever
fresh spiritual revelations. Every time a fresh spiritual revelation
comes to us there will be a fresh test to surmount. At every stage of
progress new ordeals arise, and we have to see it as the impulse for
all higher development that our souls never need give up, but can
undertake ever higher and perhaps severer tests. But if the soul
withstands the test, spiritual revelations are never lacking; though
it may be only after a long time that spiritual revelation gives to
the soul what it has to go through ordeals to attain.

Thus we see that such
ordeals are the goad which drives us upwards, and moreover that
spiritual revelations coming from above are always the reward of
effort. For this reason we must never rashly regard what can be
attained at any one stage as the final goal. For example, we should
be quite wrong to look upon what was expressed in our first
Rosicrucian Mystery Play as our end. A man can be very expert in
seeing images in the higher worlds and yet realise one day that he
has only seen images and not realities. Then he is faced by the
severe trial which Johannes Thomasius has yet to face when the second
Mystery Play comes to an end. He then becomes aware that what he has
seen is image, that he has not come to know reality sufficiently even
on the physical plane to fill out his picture with reality. Then the
soul is assailed by trials in which it has to learn how to develop
the strength to impart content to what is at first merely image. We
have to realise that we must not shrink from such trials, for every
new configuration of the world which is presented to us furnishes us
with new ordeals to be overcome; to come to an end of these trials
would mean the death of true spiritual life. We have to recognise
that we should not shrink from the trials, because they make us
strong, strong to rise up into the spiritual world.

Notes:

1.
In the Cycle
From Jesus to Christ,
given at Carlsruhe a few weeks later, Dr. Steiner repeatedly
used the word ‘Phantom’ when speaking of this
shadow-form.